Interview: SMALL MOUTH SOUNDS' Marcia DeBonis Breaks the Silence

SMALL MOUTH SOUNDS may take place during a five-day silent retreat, but that doesn't mean it has nothing to say.

The dramedy is a tight 100 minutes, but it is dense with emotion and insight into the human condition. While most of the action occurs in silence, body language and facial expressions provide context for the six characters' motivation.

Silence is occasionally broken in moving and light-hearted moments. Potato chips are loudly crunched. Giddy laughter punctuates an unexpected tryst. An uninvited forager is scared away by shrieks.

Marcia DeBonis portrays Joan, in attendance with her partner Judy (Quincy Tyler Bernstine), who is facing a serious medical condition. Although the audience has no clue as to who these characters are, personalities break through the soundless barrier.

The actors, however, know exactly who they're playing and what motivates them, said DeBonis. The playwright Bess Wohl "wrote amazingly specific back stories, and I've been lobbying to hand them out to the audience," she joked. Doesn't matter. By the play's end, the audience, using imagination to fill in the blanks, has learned plenty about each one.

We learn that Joan is a Werther's caramel candy-lover who cries easily. Rodney (Babak Tafti) is a yoga devotee who seems spiritually evolved. We learn different.

Ned (Brad Heberlee) is tightly wound for good reason, we discover through a rare monologue. Alicia (Zoë Winters) is not adjusting well to the no-cellphone ban and ignores the no-food-in-the-cabin rule. She loves potato chips. And Goldfish crackers. The guiding teacher (Jojo Gonzalez), whose distracted voice we hear giving instructions, has his own earthly problems. Jan (Max Baker), toting a child's blue backpack, remains an enigma until the play is nearly over.

DeBonis was in all three workshop productions of the play, which ran last year at Ars Nova.

"The first time playing in the production I was Judy. Then we realized I have overactive tear ducts, so I was switched to play the weepy one," DeBonis said with a laugh. "Each production has its own road map and it's been fun to watch it evolve.

"We know who these characters are-we have completely full stories," she said. "But we know it's fun for the audience to fill in their own." She's perfected the art of looking intently by watching soap operas.

"A soap opera actress once told me that to avoid having egg on your face at the end of a scene when the camera lingers too long - as they often do on soap operas - that you must think of something or else you look like a deer in the headlights," DeBonis explained.

"The trick is to look like there is something going on, even if what you are doing is going over your shopping list in your head," she said.

"In this remount we did the blocking first and the emotional work second," DeBonis said before a matinee. Three of the six retreaters are new to the transferred production. "My new partner in this show is completely different and made my character different as a result," she said.

DeBonis has never been on a silent retreat and is not a meditation fan. "I'm a heathen and I don't meditate. I don't do yoga, but I don't judge," she said. "I'm very respectful of people who do go on these retreats." The play has drawn a number of celebrities, including Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue.

"She was here yesterday, with those sunglasses on the whole time," DeBonis said. And she happened to be sitting in the perfect location to catch a bare bones scene involving the buff Rodney. "That was funny," DeBonis said.

DeBonis, who also helps actors self-tape for auditions through her Tape Room company, provides a warm setting in which actors create their tapes. She found the Small Mouth Sounds experience to have an equally warm ambiance. It's a tight group who have evolved together into their roles, she said.

"Rachel"-director Rachel Chavkin- "and Bess created a wonderful environment for all of us to work in," DeBonis said. There is no plot per se in the play, she said, but it is an intense study of human beings caught in life's struggles and upheavals.

"The biggest thing about acting in this play is listening and reacting. Good acting will help an audience understand what the story is about even when there is no concrete story to follow," she said.

Joan and Judy face some tough realizations during the course of the play, and emotions are quick to surface. "Joan has to face some uncomfortable truths about their situation and I think that's something audience members can relate to," DeBonis said.

The germ of the idea came after Wohl attended a five-day retreat at the Omega Institute in the Hudson Valley with a friend, DeBonis said. "Her friend was convinced she was going to marry a man she met-her soul mate," she recalled. "As soon as they had a conversation, it was over," she laughed.

DeBonis' ability to cry instantly has been an actor's gift, she said. "I can be triggered by one word," she said. DeBonis keeps track of all the triggers that open the floodgates. "My husband calls it my 'Cry Book,'" she joked.

DeBonis has no specific pre-show ritual other than getting to the theater a good hour early. She does have one superstition. "I think a lot of actors have superstitions. Some say 'break a leg' or do ritualistic things before a show," she said. "I have to put my wedding ring on my right hand or I know I won't have a good show." Her wedding ring was originally her father's.

"Maybe emotions are intensified because there's not much speech," DeBonis said. "Some in the audience bust out crying during certain scenes and some laugh. But I think the retreat forces Joan to deal with the truth, and she leaves understanding herself a little bit better."

Small Mouth Sounds is playing at the Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 W 42nd Street.